Paleo Fried Okra

August I don’t even know where you came from! While I have been out of school for a couple years, August still feels synonymous with “going back to school.” Thankfully summer is still in full force in California. I don’t know if I will ever get used to the fact that LA basically has one season. Cool-summer (aka “winter), almost-summer, summer and still summer.

While I was back in Oklahoma last week, I wanted to make one of my sister’s favorite side dishes: fried okra. Growing up I was never a huge fan of fried okra but over the years I grew to love it. I wanted to make this dish a knockout. Instead of simply substituting regular flour for almond flour, I wanted to add another layer of flavor into the crust. The winner in my search for an extra flavor punch- pork rinds! Yup you heard me right. As I was “frying” up these little bad boys, my family kept eating them right off the cooling tray. Needless to say it was unanimous that these were as good as the real thing! I love making recipes where you don’t feel like you are sacrificing flavor in favor of something healthy.

Ingredients

2 cups fresh okra

1 egg

2 Tbls water

1/2 cup almond flour

1/2 cup pork rinds

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp chili powder

1 stick grass-fed butter, or 1/2 cup ghee for frying

Directions

Wash and slice okra into 1/2 inch pieces discarding the stems and ends. Set up a breading assembly line. In a medium sized bowl, mix egg and water together. Place 10-15 pork rinds into a food processor or blender. Pulse until rinds reach a fine texture. This should be close to a 1/2 cup, but measure to be sure. If you are short, add more rinds to the processor and continue to pulse. Mix ground pork rinds, almond flour and seasoning into a shallow dish. Heat non-stick skillet with a couple of slices of butter. Dip about 15 okra slices into egg mixture, coat and remove with slotted spoon. Place okra into pork rind/almond flour batter. Coat throughly. Once butter is completely melted, gently place coated okra into the pan. Fry for approximately 3 minutes until golden brown. Flip and fry for another 3 minutes. Remove from pan and place on a couple of paper towels to soak up any excess grease. Continue to add more slices of butter into the pan. You don’t want a dry skillet bottom or the okra will burn. Repeat “breading” process until all okra is fried up!